Calls yesterday to Susan Oliver, the manager of the city’s Code Enforcement Department, were not returned.

Wilcoxson estimated the department damaged or destroyed about $3,000 worth of signs. A simple printed sign on a wooden stake costs about $15, while a free-standing A-frame sign runs about $65.

“When people take signs from people and destroy them without due process, it’s stealing,” said Davis, who returned in stealth at 10 p.m. Sunday to retrieve all the signs.

Not so, said Assistant City Attorney Jennifer McCain, who also heads the city’s Appearance and Compliance Team. “If they’re in the public right of way, they are considered abandoned property,” she said.

“So many young couples I marry have to go to Modesto or Tracy to start their married lives,” said Wiesner, a Catholic priest in Oakland on the San Francisco Bay. “They simply can’t afford to stay here in the Bay area and to buy a single-family dwelling.”

Tracy and Modesto are 50 and 80 miles (80 and 129 km) east of Oakland respectively. Both have seen blistering growth in recent years amid a middle-class exodus from California’s famed coastal urban centers in search of affordable housing.

Analysts say the middle-class flight will press on even if coastal home prices sag amid a national housing slowdown. Home prices near the state’s coastline would need to collapse to make buying a home there possible for many households.

Barring a collapse, ever more Californians will call the state’s Central Valley home because homes there are relatively affordable. July’s median home price in San Francisco was $771,000, compared with $438,000 in San Joaquin County roughly 60 miles (97 km) to the east, according to real estate information service DataQuick Information Systems.

September 1, 2006

WSJ.com – Homeowners Start to Feel The Pain of Rising Rates
Some borrowers are opting to sell homes they can no longer afford. Last year, James Zito, a retired salesman, refinanced into an option ARM in a deal that allowed him to pull out $50,000 in cash without increasing his monthly payments. Mr. Zito had been pulling out cash when he refinanced every three or four years. But this time, when his mortgage payments began adjusting, he realized he couldn’t afford the higher payment, and refinancing yet again wasn’t an option.

In June, Mr. Zito sold for $745,000 the three-bedroom, two-bath house in San Jose, Calif., he had lived in for 43 years and bought a smaller home in a retirement community. “I wanted to get out from under the mortgage,” he explains. With an option ARM, “your monthly payment increases, and you don’t make any headway.”

Some California brokers say they are beginning to see a return of “short sales” — transactions in which the sales price isn’t large enough to cover outstanding loans. Patti Vaughan, an agent with Assist 2 Sell in Temecula, Calif., says in recent months she has begun to get calls from borrowers looking to unload houses they can no longer afford. “They’ve upgraded their houses, put in a pool and bought themselves Hummers and BMWs,” she says. “Now they can’t get it refinanced and they can’t sell.”

Go figure! You have to work to pay for these things! What will they think of next?

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